July 28, 2010

Green Gerry - “Beth’s Goodbye”



According to the handy-dandy stats-tracking features linked up to this site, not many people were interested in my mix tape post from Monday about how musical spaces shift and blend as atmosphere and fidelity gain prominence (it’s okay, I still love you). I’m glad, though, for a chance to revisit some of those ideas while talking about this song. Green Gerry splits his time between Valencia, CA and Athens, GA, using basic gear—GarageBand and a laptop microphone, mostly—to capture ambient sounds and work them into and against his predominantly folky songs. This is headphone music for sure (as Gerry himself reminds us), so turn those speakers off and find somewhere quiet to listen. The greatest rewards here are in very small details.

What I love about “Beth’s Goodbye” is the way it plays with the imagined sonic space between your ears. People tend to think of reverb as an effect meant for extending and burying sounds—there’s a habit among indie bands of applying it widely and liberally, which can result in some pretty interesting music, but isn’t always the most nuanced approach. All sounds have a natural reverberation based on the space in which they’re recorded (that’s why studios have engineers—people who know how to capture the right reverberations), so by allowing your microphone(s) to pick up the sound of the room and by not fiddling with the raw input too much, the sonic space of your recordings can mirror that of the place(s) they were recorded in. Green Gerry knows this, and he uses the echoing sound of rooms to craft a track that layers intimate and widescreen sounds on top of each other.

“Goodbye” begins with the chatter of people at a house party, the babbling voices bouncing off the flat walls and obscuring their words. Gerry leaves the sound raw in the right channel and adds a synthetic reverb in the left, highlighting the separation between them before introducing the scratchy, centered sound he’ll use for the bulk of the song’s acoustic folk middle. His gentle strums and mumbled “here we go” signal the arrival of the new space, a smaller room where guitar and voice speak clearly. In there, he sings his way through five simple verses as a tribute to his mother. He dwells on the comfort of having her watch over him and ponders the advice she gave him: “Boy, you may laugh, weep, scream, jump, and cry / don’t hold on to or cherish what you think you really know / not too many things stay too pure in this life.” Following that last line, distant footstep sounds blanketed in extra reverb make their way into the mix, suddenly creating a wide new space for the beatific choir that concludes the instrumental part of the song. All the while, Gerry’s guitar plucks along underneath, emphasizing again the difference between the environments.

As the gorgeous, wordless sighs fade away, “Goodbye” ends on the distant echoes of the party chatter from the beginning on the track, bringing it full circle but fundamentally changing it by kicking up the effects (i.e. widening the space). I realize that ‘to reverb or not to reverb’ might not be the most interesting topic when it comes to music (and maybe not all that fun to read about if you’re not familiar with it), but the thing to remember about Green Gerry is that it’s all in service of thoughtful songwriting and transportive, provocative delivery. This is a nice “♥ MOM” song, sure, but the experience of listening to it is also inextricably tied to its spacial character, the way it moves around your ears. A lot of artists try to hide the seams of that construction (or hide behind them), but Gerry lays it out for us, putting a good song in the middle of an ever-changing space to make it a sonic treat.


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July 27, 2010

Best Coast - Crazy for You



One of my favorite things on the internet right now is a little site called ‘fuckyeahghosttowns’ (it’s a popular naming convention for Tumblr blogs—don’t ask me why) which collects pictures and stories of abandoned and run-down places. I’ve noticed a good percentage of the locales featured are old Californian mining and railroad towns that fell into disrepair once the resources dried up. Kelso was one such town, founded in the 1920s as a railroad depot (it’s in the Mojave National Preserve on the route from Las Vegas to L.A.) and booming in the ’40s with the discovery of iron, borax, gold, and silver in the area. The mines closed after only about a decade and the town slowly dwindled for the next fifty years. In the ’70s, just before the introduction of things like cable and satellite dishes, Kelso and its roughly 80 remaining residents lay outside the reach of broadcast signals and became known as “the town without television.” Bethany Cosentino would’ve hated it.

In case you didn’t know, Ms. Cosentino is the principle singer and songwriter behind a little band called Best Coast (from Los Angeles, of course). She loves to watch TV, eat junk food, play with her now famous cat Snacks, and smoke marijuana. Along with (her boyfriend) Wavves, she’s become something of a temporary indie pop idol—a California ambassador for the Pitchfork set—positioning those suburban pastimes against post-ironic songs about teenage romance, longing, and boredom. I told the story about the town of Kelso because I wanted to point out the rather obvious fact that the songs on Best Coast’s debut album, Crazy for You, don’t emanate from the real Golden State so much as a California of the mind. It’s a step beyond self-conscious fantasy, where the line between the Cosentino we read on Twitter and the woman wailing “I wish we could go back to when I was seventeen” on closer “Each & Everyday” becomes a moot distinction. The lack of performative distance here means that art and artist are practically one in the same, hence her appeal as a persona, not just as a musician. It also means that some people will be put off by the potentially banal and utterly straightforward nature of her work.

Musically, surf, punk, and grunge are the order of the day here, all framed in crunchy reverb and saccharine 60s pop melodicism. In that sense, this is a sound that speaks to our particular cultural moment (when the pendulum of nostalgia is swinging toward the Clinton years) and functions within a simplistic enough framework to not alienate anyone who isn’t looking for anything pretentious. Most of these songs stay in the bouncy middle tempos, with drums that do little more than keep time for Cosentino’s ubiquitously fuzzy rhythm guitar (which sticks to lower chords in lieu of a bass guitar) and the periodic lead guitar highlight from Bobb Bruno. Bruno, the long-haired metalhead of few words with a knack for vintage surf riffs and a soft spot for pop hooks, is a good working foil for Cosentino’s starry-eyed/glazed schtick and really makes this record. Though his direct contributions aren’t always prominent, you realize how much he brings to the table on standouts like “Boyfriend,” “Our Deal,” and bonus track “When I’m With You,” one of the duo’s early singles that fueled the Best Coast hype. The well-wrought tone and intrinsic catchiness of his leads add a sense of openness and interplay to what are otherwise very compact and repetitive tunes.

But I don’t mean to sound like I’m begrudging Best Coast their success. Crafting music that feels immediate, natural, and comfortable while retaining a modicum of identity and making sense over a narrative arc isn’t nearly as easy as people think (trust me, I’ve tried). We take pop for grated because we’re so used to it, but we still don’t understand the power it can have over us. Sure, “baby” always rhymes with “crazy,” “miss you” with “kiss you,” and “friend” with “end,” but whoever said substance and feeling couldn’t lurk within obvious couplets? Songs like “The End,” “I Want To,” “Summer Mood,” and the aforementioned “Boyfriend” are all about the exact same thing: wanting to be with someone who just wants to be friends. How many of the all-time great pop songs that we still revere have covered that subject? Cosentino has the kind of voice that can deliver simplistic sentiments with clarity and force, bolstering her case for transparency. Even if Crazy for You doesn’t make waves beyond the summer of 2010 (and I would argue that, as an album, it shouldn’t—BC are best treated as a singles band / mix tape fodder), the irrefutable fact remains that they’ve never given us a reason to expect otherwise. It’s not a tacit endorsement of shallowness or vapidity, it’s a plea for emotional directness. If getting there requires lowered defenses and teenage melodrama, so be it. Gotta get off the couch somehow, right?


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July 26, 2010

Monday Mix Tape 018

Monday Mix Tape 018 - Okay With My Decay



I’m getting ready to move this week. In order to save myself from the frantic purging that marked last year’s relocation (geez…this will be my fifth home in seven years), I’m trying to get a head start on getting packed and organized. The new apartment is about thirty minutes away, so it’s not like I couldn’t just pile stuff in a truck and make a few trips back and forth if I had to, but it would surely be an exhaustive hassle on a blazing hot Saturday. Better that I start now and at least try to get it all done in one fell swoop.

After taking all the decorative art off the walls, boxing up my records and books, and amassing a small mountain of junk between the kitchen and living room, I surveyed my space and experienced a twinge of anxiety I distinctly remember from last July. Part of it is the overwhelming disarray of having your stuff spread out everywhere in seemingly random piles. You stand there wondering how you’ll ever get it all out. But beyond the daunting task, there’s also a strange feeling of placelessness. The bare walls stand out—as do the newly exposed and/or covered patches of floor—and you trip over boxes when you get up to pee in the middle of the night. You know this is still your home with all your stuff in it, but taking things out of their usual place has suddenly highlighted the background you’ve gotten so used to that you’ve stopped seeing it. You realize that your ‘house’ is not your ‘home’ until you create a residual image of it in your mind, where things are always where they belong. It’s not about being cluttered or orderly (I am not a neat freak by any measure), it’s about being comfortable and seeing exactly what you expect to see.

All this led me to thinking about the way that the atmosphere of a recording can begin to ‘intrude’ on a song—the aural equivalent of the walls being re-exposed. Today’s mix evolves from austerely produced digital music (Caribou’s “Found Out,” Erlend Øye’s “Sheltered Life”) to balanced, harmonic guitar pop (Sparklehorse, Spoon) to spare and spacious tracks (CANT, Grimes) to noisier, more experimental indie rock (Women, Broadcast) to extreme lo-fi (Daniel Johnston’s “Like a Monkey in a Zoo”) and finally to pure ambient texture. As each song passes, the sonic atmosphere becomes a greater factor in the listening experience. The earlier tracks rely on a high level of control and fine manipulation to achieve a very exact sound, even if that sound involves exposing the seams of your construction, like in the case of Spoon. Those are followed by pieces that use both organic and synthesized spaces to extend their textures and open up their structure, beginning to butt up against their own limitations, while the songs at the end of today’s mix give in to graininess, even taking advantage of it (“Oh How I Miss You”). Infinite Body’s “Dive” finishes the compilation with a nice inversion of the scripted songs at the beginning, foregrounding the steady, buzzing texture of a single chord while leaving just a few traces of an airy looped melody in the background, like a house emptied of its furnishings. See what I mean?


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July 23, 2010

Cold Pizza Friday XXXI



Deerhunter are the best. There, I said it. With every new release, they replenish our ever-dwindling faith in good old fashioned guitar bands. They’ve crafted a fluid sonic identity for themselves, one which exists independent of strict genre guidelines and can move freely between garage, ambient, shoegaze, anthemic krautrock, and dream pop. They stay perennially one step ahead of you, but you always know them when you hear them. “Revival,” the first single from their upcoming album Halcyon Digest, hit the internet this week and is another worthy milestone in their ascension to the indie rock throne. It’s a compact, effervescent tune, heavy on bass guitar, low synth, and grainy percussion. Though Deerhunter have worked in these warmer textures before, “Revival” takes it to a new level, with a glowing air about it that matches the flushed spirituality of the lyric. Consider my expectations significantly raised.

If that wasn’t enough, this week’s Cold Pizza Friday compilation also features highly promising new tracks from Spanish party maven El Guincho and hyperactive guitar goddess Marnie Stern. El Guincho’s “Bombay” finds Pablo Díaz-Reixa cleaning up the kaleidoscopic sound of his first record and honing in on a lively beat and complementary steel drum hook that give his voice a lot more room to navigate an actual melody (as opposed to the looped chants he’s often trafficked in). Marnie Stern’s “For Ash” continues in her mode of relentless pacing, ubiquitous finger-tapping, and freaky high singing, but it has an especially glorious, anthemic energy to it. Imagine the Flaming Lips at double speed and you’ll be somewhere in the right neighborhood.

Elsewhere on today’s mix, there’s another new song from The Sandwitches (never a bad thing in my book), as well as a new tune from Tennis, the seafaring duo we covered on Wednesday and a new song from The Bees—“Silver Line”— that most certainly descends from the Simon & Garfunkel school of close harmonies and lush folk texture. Jacksonville’s unouomedude (as in ‘you know you owe me, dude’) released his Marsh EP for free this week, making some waves across the blogosphere and making our state look awesome for once. He should do a Florida tour with Surfer Blood and Sleigh Bells; spread that sunshine state love around.

We’ll end with oOoOO, perhaps my favorite ambassadors of this year’s drag/witch-house sound. “I Live for the Day” comes from a new mini mix tape put out by Tri Angle called Let Me Shine For You. The concept behind the mix—which is totally sincere, we are told—is to pay tribute to recently jailed trainwreck Lindsay Lohan, who has apparently recorded and performed music at some point since becoming famous. oOoOO’s version of “Day” is appropriately beat-heavy and narcotic, transforming the pop-rock original (listen at your own risk) from some kind of D-grade “Since U Been Gone” schtick into something mournful, isolated, and maybe even affecting. Never mind that it took stripping out all but the barest hint of the vocals to get there—breathing life into something like that is quite a feat. Don’t you agree?


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July 22, 2010

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - “Socket”



Hey, it was the 90s. If you didn’t have an arty sense of humor about your college-radio-beloved band, what good were you? What else could explain the unwieldy moniker this San Francisco quintet bestowed upon themselves? Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 were at their most active and successful from ‘91-‘94, releasing a few full-lengths on venerable indie label Matador, touring Europe and the US, and generally doing the underground rock thing of the day. They’ve basically been on hiatus since ‘96, but haven’t technically broken up or ruled out further records and tours. At this point, though, it seems pretty safe to call them an unremembered gem from a bygone era. I’ve personally only discovered their music very recently through the tumblog So Likewise (via yvynyl), a great resource for obscure and overlooked stuff like this. [*The internet is amazing, isn’t it? Even if I hadn’t been but a tender 9 years old when this song came out, I’d still probably never have had the chance to hear about TFUL282 or find a store where I could buy their CDs. Remember buying CDs at stores?]

Anyway, “Socket” is the second track from TFUL282’s fifth album, Strangers From the Universe and a wonderfully off-kilter piece of art rock. It’s clear the band were fervent devotees of the early Velvet Underground records. You can hear the echoes of Moe Tucker stomp in “Socket”s marchy ostintatos as well as some Reed/Cale grime on the guitars (not to mention the way some parts take a few repetitions before they gel). The opening bit is built on a noodling lead, slightly de-tuned strums, and a martial drum roll. It’s not the friendliest way to begin a song, but 30 seconds in “Socket” suddenly snaps into a cooly charming groove. The guitar riff sounds something like Modest Mouse covering “Sister Ray,” while shaker and hand claps add to the percussive strut and Hugh Swarts delivers a postmodern story-verse. “When I was young I caught a jolt from a wall socket,” he murmurs, “I saw white light and I sang a song with the angels / They took me aside and told me it wasn’t my time yet / I awoke in a room hooked up to tubes and machines.” It’s a familiar tale of near-death experience, but it doesn’t get completed until TFUL282 take a few more left turns.

Following Swarts’ verse, the band drops into a half-time psych-out replete with even more bent strings and extra percussive texture (if you are a drummer, buy a woodblock ASAP; it makes everything better). Of course, lest “Socket” run away with itself, TFUL282 follow that passage with a punky, staccato breakdown that for some reason makes me think of Sonic Youth—maybe it’s the odd time signature?—before replaying the opening jam and segueing back into that sweet groove. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense written out. There’s a meandering logic to the way these abrupt shifts are stitched together in real time, not as movements of some kind of prog opus, but as methods of exploring the bands’ outer limits.

“The doctors claim there’s nothing wrong with me,” continues Swarts, “But I can’t taste or smell and I can hardly see / and sleep is my worst enemy.” Turns out coming back from the brink of the afterlife dulls everything in normal life. The second verse picks up on the shade of dehumanization hinted at in the first (when he wakes up in the hospital), robbing Swarts of his ability to experience the world and find any kind of peace. I said “Socket” had postmodern lyrics a minute ago not only because they’re truncated, declarative, and sad, but because they seem to be describing a resignation to a dull kind of pointlessness in the wake of the glimpse into Valhalla. Either that or they’re just telling a crazy story. Bands do that sometimes, too.


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